Alannah
by TrinityTinuviel
Summary: A little girls learns to deal with love and loss under the vast dome of the Zion 'sky'


Title: Alannah  
  
Author: TrinityTinuviel  
  
Disclaimer: I own the girl. All other characters belong to the Genius Wachowski Brothers.  
  
Spoilers: Revolutions, and basically the entire Matrix Trilogy.   
  
A/N: Alannah means 'my child' in Gaelic  
  
The girl was good at running. Of course, she'd had a lot of practice. She was usually the courier of messages between her mother and her numerous uncles and aunts, up and down the levels of Zion all day. That's how she had learned to count. Aunty Chyra up 3 levels, Uncle Meios down 5 levels. On this particular day, the girl was running quickly, along one of the broad avenues of Zion. It was her own floor, so she knew it well. It was busy, so a ship must have come in. Her family lived near the military wing. As most Zion children, she had learned early on to notice things like these. She felt the rhythm of her steps in her feet, pounding down on the rock. The quick, even paces felt good. She dodged, weaving between people, around market stalls, and jumping over the occasional pile of dirt on the sides of the street. She loved this advantage her small size allowed. When she was with her mother, she would always have to be held back by a handful of tunic, to be kept from running faster, weaving and dodging till they got to their destination, no matter how long it took her mother.   
  
But on this particular day, she tripped.   
  
The girl suppressed a cry of pain as she tripped and landed hard on the cobbled street, scraping roughly against a sharp outcropping of rock. Trying desperately not to cry, she pushed herself back up until she in a sitting position. Examining her knee, she was horrified to find it red, with a few drops of scarlet blood emerging from a cut. She hated blood. When her brother was born, in that small bedroom in their apartment smelling of labour, and blood, and love, she had passed out. She had come to later, on the bunk on her room. Her father had never let her hear the end of it, same as her brother would never let her hear the end of it if she came home with a scratched up knee and bawling. She concentrated on breathing deeply, while she gingerly reached out to her knee and swabbed it with her sleeve. It stung painfully, and the tears welled up again.  
  
Suddenly, there was a Woman there. The Woman smiled sadly, and reached down to touch the girl on the shoulder. The girl jumped with fright and looked at her cautiously.   
  
"What happened here?" the Woman asked, smiling gently and lowering herself to be level with the girl, curled up on the ground.   
  
"I fell," answered the girl in a small voice. Then, straightening her shoulders and looking the Woman in the eyes, she continued "I'm fine, its nothing."   
  
"Well, don't wipe off the blood with your sleeve," the Woman said, leaning down to push her hand away from her leg with gentle fingers. She helped the girl up and moved them to a nearby bench, where the girl promptly stretched out her leg, grimaced, and eyed it carefully. The blood was still there.   
  
"Why?" said the girl, eagerly looking up at her. " 'Cause my brother said that people can get all black and sick if you do. But I don't believe him." The woman smiled.   
  
"That doesn't usually happen. At least, not in my experience."   
  
"How do you know?" asked the little girl, eyes getting wider by the minute. The hurting leg was forgotten as a little girl found a new friend, a person willing to submit to her endless barrage of questions.  
  
"I work on a ship," came the response, at which the girl's eyes lit up.  
  
  
  
"Really?" she breathed, eyes as wide as saucers now, fingers twirling in figure eights, plucking at cloth in an excited flutter. "Which one? For how long? Are you the medic, 'cause you know a lot about hurts and cuts and stuff-" She was cut off by the Woman chuckling to herself. "What?"   
  
  
  
"Oh, its nothing. You're very inquisitive. Do you know what that means?" The little girl shook her head. "It means you ask a lot of questions."   
  
The girl hung her head, hands and twining fingers falling limply in her lap   
  
"I'm sorry. Mam always says I ask too many questions." The Woman grasped her falling chin with two fingers and met her eyes with hers. It had never occurred to the girl how blue her eyes were. Sparkly and a deep, deep blue, like the bead her mother always wore around her neck.   
  
"Its ok," reassured the Woman "I don't mind. To answer your questions: Yes, I work on a ship. It's the Nebuchadnezzar, and I've been there for a long time. I'm not the medic, but we have a small crew so we all have to pitch in doing different jobs sometimes." The girl's eyes, previously bright with unshed tears, began to look up.   
  
"Why are you back?" she asked "The Neba-nebu-" she wrinkled her nose, trying to get the garbled word out of her mouth "The Neb usually doesn't dock that much." She finished. "I know 'cause it doesn't usually come up much on the arrivals board at the Dock"  
  
"No, we usually don't," The Woman mused, "Today we have a new person."   
  
The girl giggled. "What?" she said quizzically.  
  
"Sometimes the newly freed people get lost." The girl giggled again to herself, and smiled back at the Woman "I once had to take someone back to the military wing. I think he got lost somewhere on the 5th level." The Woman smiled back.  
  
"I'll have to be sure to take care of this one than," The Woman said, solemnly nodding her head. "He's a special one."   
  
"Really?" asked the girl quizzically "How?" She was confused. Before, it had seemed that all soldiers, and even poddies were equal. How could one be so special?   
  
"He... oh, I don't know. He can do things that other people can't do," said the Woman, passing a hand through her short hair, searching for a way of explaining this lovely mystery to a child. The girl nodded. She felt like she understood. They both lapsed into silence, watching the busy streets. Neither occupant of the bench recognized anyone, and they both felt a delicious sense of freedom and anonymity. The Woman cleared her throat then, and the girl looked up sleepily. Some of the lights had already gone off on the streets, and all of Zion was lit with the glow of what seemed to be a thousand bright specks of light, floating in the vast cavern of this mighty city. If you looked long enough, the lights looked like they would spiral up and out, onto the vast surface of the desolated Earth.  
  
"Lets see that leg of yours. Don't worry, I'll be gentle, " she said, pulling at the girl's scrawny leg, calming the girl with a sure touch. "It's nothing big. "Tell your mother to put some water and cloth on it and it should be fine."   
  
The girl nodded her assent, and moved to stand. She smiled hesitantly.   
  
"Thank you," she said, "for answerin' my questions and everything. Are you going to be back soon?"   
  
"I don't really know," replied the Woman, pushing herself up from the bench with strong arms. "My captain doesn't like not having anything to do. He'd rather not stay in Zion. And when he makes up his mind, there's nothing a Second-Officer like myself can say that will change that. "   
  
The girl's eyes opened wide. "You're a second-officer?" she breathed, very impressed with the Woman sitting beside her.   
  
The Woman smiled "Yes, I am." She said, and moved to walk off. "You'd best be getting home. Your mother will be worried." The girl nodded.   
  
"Goodbye!" she called, and she hobbled home on steady feet. The Woman stood and watched her go for a minute, then started walking towards the elevator, with a small smile still on her face. She had realized that a small child had lifted the weight off her shoulders, if only for a few moments.   
  
"This is what we're fighting for," she murmured to herself.   
  
As soon as the girl got home, her mother descended on her. Within the endless questions of 'where were you?' to 'what exactly think you were doing?' the girl realized that she had forgotten to ask the Woman her name. The offending wound was washed and bound with a strip of clean white cloth, but she couldn't wipe away the memory of the Woman's haunting blue eyes. Later that evening, she examined her mothers necklace closer, and found that, no, it couldn't come close to matching the Woman's eyes.   
  
It was much later when the girl found out the Woman's name. It was when her family had emerged from the Temple, after the Sentinels were confirmed to be completely dormant. There was a name passed from lips to lips of all the women in Zion. She heard it whispered in the farthest corners of the Temple, to the broad avenue of the main level. Trinity...Trinity went to 01 with the-...Trinity and the One were-, yes, Trinity.... It wasn't until her mother showed her a picture of this Goddess, this Lady that has sacrificed herself and the life of her lover for Zion, that she made that connection. She was there, on the data pad, staring back at her with her with those eyes. It was an old picture; one of military issue, and it came nowhere near to capturing the essence of this Lady. The girl had promptly burst into tears, and fled, leaving her mother to sit heavily down at the table and wonder if she and her husband had revealed too much about the war and the more secret missions to their young daughter.   
  
The girl was curled up on that bench on the same street when her mother found her. She sat quietly beside her, and took her in her arms. The girl scrubbed at her eyes and looked up at her mother. "Shh..." said her mother, rocking her slowly in her arms "I know. It's a great loss. We can still remember her, though, keep her here. Then maybe we'll find some peace, and she will too. All we have to do is keep telling her story, so no one forgets. Can you do that with me, alannah?" she asked, threading her hands in the girl's hair and rubbing slowly. The girl nodded, and snuggled down into her arms. They sat there for an hour or more, and when they turned back to go home, they were both comforted.   
  
And She smiled. 


End file.
